Americans should look at reality rather than Hollywood-style happy endings when they gauge the progress in Ukraine and other post-Soviet states. Many Americans still prefer the memory of Boris Yeltsin's stirring 1991 speech atop a Moscow tank, but they ignore the aftermath: the suppression of legislators and journalists. More than two years since the electrifying "revolutions" in Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan, it is time to reflect on the results.
The reality is disappointing in contrast with the hopes of Ukraine's 2004 "Orange Revolution." The bad news: Ukraine is moving at a glacial pace in reforms. The good news: At least Kiev has avoided any major deterioration. Ukrainians can be grateful that they won secession peacefully in 1991 from hypercentralized Moscow.
According to a draft report published by Washington-based Freedom House, the overall "democracy score" in Ukraine became slightly worse from 2006 to 2007. Ukraine's current performance in economic freedom is declining, as rated in the free-market report published annually by The Wall Street Journal and The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington. In fact, Ukraine's economy is seen as slightly less free than Russia's. The January report stated, "Ukraine is ranked 40th out of 41 countries in the European region, and its overall score is much lower than the regional average."
However, Ukraine's freedom in terms of civil society had improved significantly from the 1990s to 2005. Freedom of the press has clearly improved since the "Orange Revolution." Ukraine has far more religious freedom than Russia.
The Freedom House report concluded that in Ukraine, "nationwide television channels in most cases provided balanced news coverage; representatives of the ruling parties as well as the opposition had equal access to the media." Nevertheless, many local governments still dominate the local news media.
According to a nongovernmental organization specializing in monitoring the media, at least 14 journalists were attacked or intimidated in Ukraine in 2006. Last year a Ukrainian court issued a guilty verdict for five murderers after the 2001 death of a television journalist.
This is in dramatic contrast with post-Soviet Russia, where not one murder of a high-profile journalist has been solved. Nine Russian journalists were killed in 2006 alone. Ukraine's freedom of the press improved significantly from 2004 to 2005, then again from 2005 to 2006 – but failed to improve during the 12 months up to the spring of 2007.
Ukrainians and Russians enjoyed the end of state-enforced atheism in the late 1980s. However, their paths have diverged since the mid-1990s. Russia's 1997 law formally reestablished state control over religious life, brazenly contradicting its own 1993 constitution. In contrast, Ukraine is essentially observing its own constitutional guarantees for rights of conscience. Unlike Russian bureaucrats, both in law and in practice, Ukrainian bureaucrats do not suppress freedom of religious speech – nor do they expel foreign missionaries.
